Traditionally, broadcasting has been an activity that involves highly skilled specialists utilizing expensive equipment to send live video over a limited number of network channels. An important component of this process has been the real time display of information as text and graphics layered over the video. Examples range from sports scoreboards to stock tickers to weather. Systems to accomplish this have traditionally been highly specialized, complicated to run, and expensive.
Now, broadcasting has expanded exponentially to the point where anybody can originate a broadcast on a personal computer and send it over the Internet. As the cost and complexity of broadcasting shrinks, so too must the cost and complexity of the graphics systems that retrieve data and automate its conversion into text and graphics overlaying a live broadcast. Indeed, with the graphics hardware provided for consumer games today, the underlying firepower to do this affordably already exists.
And indeed, products like NewBlue's Titler Live realize the power of delivering complex text and graphics on today's low cost computers. But, there still remains the task of automating the management of graphics data coming in to drive the titles.
Three examples of this growing need are Twitch streamers, who broadcast a video game live while displaying dynamic user information on screen, and high school sportscasters, who stream an athletic event over the Internet and require a live overlaid scoreboard.
For the online gamer, the need is for a system that connects to multiple game related services, for example Twitch and StreamTip, retrieves real time data, organizes the data intelligently, and displays it over the streamed game with quality animations, fueling an interactive and entertaining live broadcast. This must be easily set up by the gamer who chooses and even customizes the title templates, while making high level decisions about when and how to display them.
For a high school sportscaster, game data from a scoreboard or similar source needs to be processed, and played back automatically with broadcast style graphics, simplifying the streaming experience and making the whole process approachable and affordable.